Speculative and Future Fiction

Monthly Archives: March 2009

I learned to speak and write English when I was about twenty-one years old so English has never been a language I use naturally. In fact, it is one of the most difficult language to learn — if you step away from the basics. It has a lot of subtlety, derivations from other languages, turn of phrases that are difficult to master. Prepositions, and their use, have been, and continue to be, a challenge. Some words are similar (lay, lie) others are grammatically confusing (their, there; its, it’s).

Confusing Words is a website that helps with those challenges. It boasts over 3200 words and their definition and use. Here is an example from one of my own confusion:

take

to go with

bring

to come with

Examples

Bring a covered dish when you come to the pot luck supper, but be sure to take your dish home with you when you go.

WEbook, a self-publishing service, has a fun app, 911 Writers Block, for those who are stuck, whether it’s with a character, a scene, or a verb. If anything, it’s a nice tool to waste time instead of writing… and who knows, maybe it will trigger some masterpiece.

[Fiction] Friday Â« Write Anything
[Fiction] Friday Challenge for March 27, 2009:
Setting: An office building – A secondary character says: â€œLook, somebody has got to make a decision.â€ Your main character offers a solution.

How To Play:
1. Check this page for the new challenge.
2. Write for at least 5 minutes.
3. NO EDITING
4. On Friday, post it to your blog.
5. Come back to Write Anything and leave the link to your post.
6. Visit otherâ€™s posts and leave constructive comments.

Here is my entry:

Peter rolled his eyes. Lynne was always pushing, prodding, always in a hurry to get things done. It didnâ€™t matter if everyone else wasnâ€™t up to her speed. Instead of helping, her attitude created more problems, more antagonism. It had been exactly the same in their relationship and that was why â€“thank the Lordâ€”he had been smart enough to get out of it.

That time, it had been him who had been in a hurry to make a decision. He still felt it had been the right one, even though working together made matters more difficult than they should be.

He wasnâ€™t a fool; he knew everyone around the table knew Lynne and he had been involved, and almost serious, with each other. They knew the reason Lynne was so much in a hurry to get out of the meetings was because she couldnâ€™t stand to be in the same room as he was. They knew that it was his own damn fault if the atmosphere at the office had changed from tropical to arctic.

Family Matters is troubling, tender, disturbing, and 100% Rohinton Mistry. The title has, of course, a double entendre: family is important, but events in a family have a impact on it. And that’s what happens in this book: a father’s past interferes with his children’s present. It changes the way they see him, care for him. It is also about the inevitable descent into old age and its concurrent loss of dignity and the helplessness of the old. It is about morality… and the power (and corruption) of money.

Here is a summary of the story from the publisher:

Set in Bombay in the mid-1990s, Family Matters tells a story of familial love and obligation, of personal and political corruption, of the demands of tradition and the possibilities for compassion. Nariman Vakeel, the patriarch of a small discordant family, is beset by Parkinsonâ€™s and haunted by memories of his past. He lives with his two middle-aged stepchildren, Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. But the burden of the illness worsens the already strained family relationships. Soon, their sweet-tempered half-sister, Roxana, is forced to assume sole responsibility for her bedridden father. And Roxanaâ€™s husband, besieged by financial worries, devises a scheme of deception involving his eccentric employer at a sporting goods store, setting in motion a series of events that leads to the narrativeâ€™s moving outcome.

The only disappointing aspect of the book is the epilogue, which, in my opinion, is totally unnecessary and detracts from the rest of the story. Nevertheless, a highly recommended read.

I guess it’s a reminder of two things: if you don’t get started, you don’t get anywhere, and sometimes you might as well do something else (like going to Norbert’s) than sit around and be unproductive.